Distant future, the year AD 4015, Earth calendar. As a result of a reincarnation experiment, three sisters – Masha, Irina and Olga, deceased in 1900, find a new life in the new world.
They have the classic Anton Chekhov’s play The Three Sisters uploaded into their newly reincarnated brains.
Different kinds of sound, noise and consonance, snatches of phrases they used to utter long ago give the three sisters visions of the past, while simultaneously enabling them to start a new life. Yet their half-forgotten words are filled with the same old hopes and yearnings, and it makes no difference whether the destination of the 41st century heroines is the far away space station called Moscow or the actual ancient capital of the Russian Empire. Is there no way to bypass the programme and to change your destiny?
It is the aim of the experiment to answer this question.
Actors are givers, who ignite a sparkle and keep the fire going in hopes for a better living. They tell the world how to live a better life. The first ever actor was Prometheus, who had challenged the Gods and stolen the light from their feast. He took it for humanity and gave it to us. You are chosen and marked, you are special, you are oracles and preachers. You are not made from plastic, you have red living blood coursing through your veins, which gives you the firsthand instincts of life. How can I remind you that you are kind and generous, or that your hearts start racing and hurting at the smallest instant of ugliness and injustice? You are the guardians of people’s inner beauty, you are the prophets. You have ideal principles stored and hidden inside you and your desires are strong. You are in the middle of the fight for good and evil, between the purity and the dirt. Much, very much today depends entirely on you.
Andriy Zholdak. A letter to the actors of the Turku theatre. May 2012
The performance premiered on February 4, 2016
Media about the
In his Three Sisters on the Alexandrinsky Theatre stage, Zholdak walks in outer space by transferring the events into an unreal future and imagining the three sisters reincarnating and remembering the details of the Prozorovs household and their emotions. He enlarges and completes the familiar biographies (a criminal offence!). The characters are then plunged into Faulkner’s and Bergman’s kinds of abyss. He adds the mercilessness and physiological detail of the modern cinematograph. The result is both earthly and Chekhov-like.
Nina Agisheva. Three Sisters through the Looking Glass
Snob, February 2016
The title that may strike you at first as either an attempt at flirting or a sign of precaution against the guardians of pure classic literature, on second thoughts appears remarkably relevant. The words and motifs of Chekhov’s play remain, in Zholdak’s interpretation, precisely on the other side. Not only on the other side of life and death, but also on the other side of the mysterious pulsation of Chekhov’s lines, whose laconic words hold the over rich substance of sense as if in a tight capsule.
Alena Karas’. Flying Like the Strange World Birds
Rossiyskaya Gazeta, March 2016
Andriy Zholdak always offers twice as much as an ordinary theatre night can hold. Yet now the wild, almost volcanic Zholdak energy is not wasted on the footlights barrier, but hits the viewers’ heads directly. Secondly, the Alexandrinsky Theatre hall whose beauty defies description now provides the perfect background for the performance. And another bonus – the opportunity to cross the empty hall and climb the Emperor’s theatre stage.
Roman Dolzhansky. The Sisters as a Premonition
Kommersant, February 2016
This is extremely unscientific fiction and a marvelously beautiful performance.
Vadim Rutkovsky. Physics for the Lyric-minded: New Theatre in Saint Petersburg
Snob, February 2016
